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London Borough of Waltham Forest (202432410)

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REPORT

COMPLAINT 202432410

London Borough of Waltham Forest

25 July 2025

 

Our approach

The Housing Ombudsman’s approach to investigating and determining complaints is to decide what is fair in all the circumstances of the case. This is set out in the Housing Act 1996 and the Housing Ombudsman Scheme (the Scheme). The Ombudsman considers the evidence and looks to see if there has been any ‘maladministration’, for example whether the landlord has failed to keep to the law, followed proper procedure, followed good practice or behaved in a reasonable and competent manner.

Both the resident and the landlord have submitted information to the Ombudsman and this has been carefully considered. Their accounts of what has happened are summarised below. This report is not an exhaustive description of all the events that have occurred in relation to this case, but an outline of the key issues as a background to the investigation’s findings.

The complaint

  1. The complaint is about the landlord’s response to:
    1. The resident’s request for a refund of the credit balance on his rent account, including interest and compensation.
    2. The resident’s reports that the landlord had not made reasonable adjustments.
    3. The resident’s reports that a member of staff had made inappropriate comments.
    4. The resident’s concerns that his front door was not replaced at the same time as the front doors of other properties on the estate.
    5. The resident’s concerns about contact restrictions.

Background

  1. The resident is a secure tenant of the landlord which is a local authority. The property is a one-bedroomed flat within a block containing 6 flats.
  2. The resident has vulnerabilities resulting from being autistic; this means that he requires communications to be ‘autism-friendly’. The resident has explained that this means no complex written communications and he has requested the landlord and this Service ring him before sending any written communication.
  3. The resident phoned the landlord on 25 November 2024 and requested it to log a complaint regarding the following matters:
    1. He said the landlord had refused to refund him £2,500 plus interest and compensation for not providing the refund for three and a half years. He said the refund was comprised of the credit balance on his rent account and awards from us and the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP).
    2. He said the landlord had not replaced his front door when all the others on the estate were done. He said that his block therefore did not meet the fire regulations and his front door was unsafe.
    3. He said the landlord had put in place restrictions on his contact over the past 5 years (he said part of this involved putting a single point of contact in place).
    4. He said the landlord had caused him abuse by refusing to accept his reasonable adjustments in relation to his communications.
  4. The landlord sent its stage 1 reply on 10 December 2024 in which it stated the following:
    1. The resident had said that he was owed £2,500 plus interest and compensation. However, the landlord said it had previously confirmed that the resident’s rent account was showing a credit balance of £1,222.85.
    2. It said there was a process in place for claiming refunds of credit balances and the details could be found online. It also said that the resident should contact its Rents Team if he had any questions about the process.
    3. The landlord said it refuted any allegations of abuse and failure to make reasonable adjustments. It attached a copy of a letter it had sent to the resident in 2022 setting out the reasonable adjustments it was prepared to make. The landlord said it would continue making these same reasonable adjustments.
    4. The landlord said that it had implemented a programme of renewing residents’ front doors on the estate in 2021/22. However, it said its records showed that the resident had refused to have his front door renewed because of the proposed colour of the door.
    5. The resident had complained that the landlord had placed him on a ‘ban list’ for 5 years, which he said had placed restrictions on him contacting the landlord. The landlord said that we had previously investigated this matter.
    6. The landlord did not uphold the resident’s complaint.
  5. Following further contact with us by the resident, we wrote to the landlord on 19 December 2024 to advise that the resident wanted the landlord to escalate his complaint because:
    1. The resident said the landlord’s stage 1 reply did not explain about “the missing funds” from his rent account. He said he was not happy to use the landlord’s portal to request a refund. He added that the portal would only allow him to request a refund of the current credit balance and would not allow him to request interest or compensation.
    2. The resident alleged that the caretaker had said to a delivery driver that the resident was not disabled. The resident said as a result, the driver refused to carry his shopping to the resident’s door.
    3. The resident said he did not refuse to have the fire door fitted. He said he had been concerned that all of the council owned properties on the estate would have the same colour door. He said that the council’s properties had previously been targeted for burglaries.
    4. The resident said he believed the landlord’s introduction of a single point of contact for him was punitive rather than supportive. He said it had restricted his contact with the landlord.
  6. The landlord sent its stage 2 reply on 23 December 2024 in which it said the following:
    1. In its view, the stage 1 response had been adequate and reasonable.
    2. The landlord said the resident should contact its Rents Team regarding a refund of the credit balance on his rent account.
    3. It repeated that the letter it had sent in 2022 had outlined the reasonable adjustments it would make. It said it would continue to make these adjustments.
    4. It reiterated that the resident had refused the fire door because of the door colour.
    5. The landlord said it had previously implemented a single point of contact as a supportive measure and it considered this matter had been resolved.
    6. The landlord said it did not uphold the resident’s complaint.

Events after the landlord’s stage 2 response

  1. The resident contacted us on 29 January 2025 to say he was dissatisfied with the landlord’s stage 2 reply because he said the answers given in the stage 2 reply were untrue. He said he had not received any refund, interest or compensation, he said he had not refused to have the fire door fitted and he still believed there to be contact restrictions in place.
  2. The resident wrote to us on 14 March 2025 to say he had contacted the landlord to request the refund. He was told that someone from the Rents Team would ring him back but instead he had received a text message.
  3. The resident advised us on 4 July 2025 that the landlord had attended his property approximately 7 weeks earlier to measure for a new front door.
  4. The landlord advised us on 18 July 2025 that the cheques sent to the resident in 2022 to refund the balance on his rent account at the time were subsequently cancelled as the resident did not cash them. The landlord advised that it would credit the amounts to the resident’s rent account as the cheques had been cancelled.

Assessment and findings

Jurisdiction

  1. What we can and cannot consider is called the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. This is governed by the Scheme. When a complaint is brought to us, we must consider all the circumstances of the case, as there are sometimes reasons why a complaint will not be investigated.
  2. After carefully considering all the evidence, in accordance with the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the following aspects of the complaint that were made by the resident to the landlord on 25 November 2024 are outside of our jurisdiction:
    1. The resident’s reports that the landlord had not made reasonable adjustments.
    2. The resident’s reports that a member of staff had made inappropriate comments.
    3. The resident’s concerns about contact restrictions.
  3. The reasons each of these complaints are considered outside our jurisdiction are:
    1. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) previously reviewed the resident’s complaint that the landlord had failed to make reasonable adjustments. It reviewed this aspect of the complaint under reference number 22 014 418 and published its decision on 17 September 2023. Paragraph 42.l. of the Scheme states: “The Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion…seek to raise again matters which the Housing Ombudsman, or any other Ombudsman has already decided upon”. In this case, the LGSCO has already made a decision on the and therefore it is considered outside to be outside our jurisdiction.
    2. The resident did not raise his complaint about a member of staff making inappropriate remarks as part of his stage 1 complaint. Therefore, the matter was not considered by the landlord as part of its stage 1 or 2 replies. Paragraph 42.a. of the Scheme states: “The Ombudsman may not consider complaints which, in the Ombudsman’s opinion…are made prior to having exhausted a member’s complaints procedure…”. In this case, as the complaint about the member of staff has not been through the landlord’s complaint process, we consider it to be outside our jurisdiction.
    3. The complaint about contact restrictions and the landlord putting in place a single point of contact has previously been investigated by us under case reference 202303242. We therefore consider the matter to be outside our jurisdiction under paragraph 42.l. of the Scheme.

Scope of investigation

  1. Some of the evidence we have received relates to events that took place after the landlord sent its final complaint response on 23 December 2024. A key part of our role is to assess the landlord’s response to a complaint and therefore it is important that the landlord has had an opportunity to consider all the information we are investigating as part of its complaint response. In this case, we consider it is fair and reasonable to only investigate matters up to the date of the final response. Information following the landlord’s final complaint response has, however, been included in this report for context.
  2. Part of the resident’s complaint is that his front door was not replaced at the same time as the front doors for other properties on the estate. The door replacement programme occurred in 2021/22. We encourage residents to raise complaints with their landlords in a timely manner. This is because with the passage of time, evidence may be unavailable and personnel involved may have left an organisation, which makes it difficult for a thorough investigation to be carried out and for informed decisions to be made.
  3. Taking into account the availability and reliability of evidence, we do not consider it would be fair and reasonable to investigate the events that occurred before or during the door replacement programme. We have therefore focussed our assessment on how the landlord responded to the resident’s concerns about the safety of his front door in 2024. Any reference to the events that occurred prior to this time is made in this report to provide context.
  4. Our records show that as part of case reference 202104070 we previously investigated the landlord’s handling of the resident’s request for a refund of the credit balance on his rent account. Our previous assessment covered the period up to and including December 2021. Therefore, we have now investigated events from 2022 onwards.

The resident’s request for a refund of the credit balance on his rent account and other sums, including added interest and compensation

  1. The landlord’s Refund Procedure states that it will write to the resident informing them of the refund by cheque or by BACS transfer.
  2. The landlord wrote to the resident on 17 June 2022 to advise him that a cheque would be sent to him within the next 7 working days to cover the credit balance on his rent account. This was in line with the landlord’s procedure and was therefore appropriate. The landlord’s records show that it then sent him cheques to the value of £1211.22 and £84.14 (a total of £1295.36) in June 2022 and debited his rent account to show these payments had been made. It was reasonable that the landlord had debited the resident’s rent account to show that it had sent the payments to the resident in the form of cheques.
  3. The resident contacted the landlord on 25 November 2024 to requested it to log a complaint. Part of his complaint was that he was owed a refund of approximately £2,500 by the landlord. He said he was also expecting the landlord to pay him interest and compensation due to the delay in paying him the refund. He said the refund was comprised of the credit balances on his rent account and compensation from the DWP and the Ombudsman.
  4. The landlord sent its stage 1 reply to the resident in which it stated that it had previously confirmed the resident had a credit balance of £1,222.85 on his rent account. It stated that there was a process in place for claiming refunds and the resident could access the relevant form online. The landlord added that the resident could contact its Rents Team if he had any questions regarding the process. It was reasonable that the landlord had advised the resident of the current credit balance on his rent account. This gave the resident an idea of how much he could claim as a refund. It was also reasonable that the landlord had provided the resident with the contact details of its Rents Team in the event he had questions about the process.
  5. The resident’s rent statement shows that he had a credit balance of £1,222.85 on his rent account on 9 December 2024. Therefore, the landlord had advised the resident of the correct balance at the time of its stage 1 reply on 10 December 2024.
  6. In his stage 2 complaint, the resident said he was frustrated because the landlord had not used its stage 1 reply to address the £1,300 that he said was missing. The landlord stated in its stage 2 reply on 23 December 2024 that its stage 1 reply had been adequate and reasonable. It was a shortcoming on the landlord’s part that it had not addressed the matter of the £1,300 the resident had mentioned in his complaint. The resident’s rent statements show that on 14 June 2022 the landlord debited a total of £1,295.36, which would account for the £1,300 the resident referred to in his complaint. Had the landlord provided an explanation for this debit, it may have helped the resident to understand the balance on his rent account and might have helped to resolve the complaint.
  7. The landlords records show that the debited sum of £1,295.36 from the resident’s account was because it had sent him cheques to refund the credit balance on his account at the time. The landlord wrote to the resident on 17 June 2022 to advise him that a cheque would be sent to him as a refund for the credit on his account. The landlord’s Refund Procedure states that it will write to the resident informing them that the refund will be paid by cheque or by BACS transfer (the procedure states that refunds can only be paid by cheque or by BACS transfer). The landlord had therefore acted in line with its procedure by writing to the resident to inform him of the refund and by issuing a cheque to him.
  8. As part of his complaint, the resident requested interest and compensation because he said the landlord had delayed dealing with his request for a refund. It was also a shortcoming on the landlord’s part that it did not address this within its stage 1 or stage 2 replies. However, the landlord’s procedures do not state that it will pay interest on credit balances and therefore we have found no evidence that the landlord has breached its policies or procedures by not offering interest on the credit balances on the resident’s rent account.
  9. We have not seen any evidence to show that the landlord agreed to or was required to pay compensation in relation to its handling of the resident’s requests for a refund. Furthermore, we have found that the landlord acted reasonably in its response to the resident’s request for a refund of the credit balance on his rent account and other sums. Therefore, we have made a finding of no maladministration.

The resident’s concerns that his front door was not replaced at the same time as the front doors of other properties on the estate

  1. The landlord’s terms and conditions of tenancy state:
    1. “The Council is entitled to improve or alter any part of your home which it has a responsibility to repair”.
    2. “You must let into your home anybody working for the Council and anybody else who the Council allows to enter your home, so long as the Council tell you in advance when those people are coming, and they are not coming at unreasonable times”.
  2. An independent fire consultant carried out a fire risk assessment of the resident’s block on 1 October 2024 and the contractor’s findings were:
    1. The flat entrance doors were a mixture of composite and newly installed fire doors. However, the composite doors could not be confirmed to be fire rated and should therefore be replaced.
    2. The report recommended that the flat entrance door and frame for the resident’s property are replaced with FD30S self-closing fire doors and frame sets (FD30S doors are resistant to fire and smoke for 30 minutes).
    3. The report recommended for the resident’s door to be replaced as a medium priority as part of its planned works programme with a recommended timescale of 18 months.
  3. The resident phoned the landlord on 25 November 2024 and said that the landlord had not replaced his front door when others in his block had been replaced. He said his front door was therefore unsafe. The landlord sent its stage 1 reply on 10 December 2024 and confirmed that other properties on the resident’s estate had their front doors replaced in 2021/22 as part of a fire door renewal programme. However, the landlord said its records showed that the resident had refused to have the new door fitted due to its colour.
  4. In his stage 2 complaint the resident said he had not refused to have the new door fitted. He said he had simply raised a query at the time because he was unhappy that all of the doors had to be the same colour. He said he was concerned the building could not be recorded as fire safe while at least one of the doors did not meet the fire regulations. He said he wanted his door replaced but wanted the landlord to confirm he could have a different colour. The landlord sent its stage 2 reply on 23 December 2024 and reiterated that the resident had refused to have the fire door installed because of the colour of the proposed door.
  5. As stated earlier, we have not investigated the events that resulted in the resident’s front door not being replaced in 2021/22. This means we have not assessed whether it was reasonable not to replace the door in 2021/22. However, the landlord had an opportunity during the complaints process to review the resident’s request for the door to be replaced. The resident had advised the landlord that his door was unsafe as it had not been replaced with the upgraded fire door. Given the importance of fire safety in blocks, it was unreasonable that the landlord did not use its complaints process to respond specifically to the resident’s concerns about the safety of the existing door.
  6. We have found there was service failure by the landlord because it did not use its complaint responses to address the resident’s concerns about the safety of his door. The landlord was aware that a recent fire risk assessment had been carried out on 1 October 2024 and was issued on 30 October 2024. The report had recommended the replacement of the resident’s door to a higher rated fire and smoke resistant door. Therefore, we would have expected the landlord to use this information to reassure the resident of its plans to replace the door.
  7. We have ordered the landlord to write to the resident setting out its plans, including timescales for replacing the front door. As the resident had asked in his stage 2 complaint about whether there was any choice in terms of the colour of the door, we have ordered the landlord to also address this question when it writes to the resident. We have ordered the landlord to pay the resident £50 compensation for not fully addressing his complaint. This sum is within the range of sums recommended in our Remedies Guidance for service failures.
  8. In arriving at our finding of service failure and the level of compensation ordered, we have taken into account that the fire risk assessment recommended the replacement of the door within 18 months of the inspection. Therefore, at the time of the landlord’s stage 1 and 2 replies, it was still well within this recommended timescale. We understand that the landlord has now measured for a new front door.

Determination

  1. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was no maladministration by the landlord in its response to the resident’s request for a refund of the credit balance on his rent account, including interest and compensation.
  2. In accordance with paragraph 52 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, there was service failure by the landlord in its response to the resident’s concerns that his front door was not replaced at the same time as the front doors of other properties on the estate.
  3. In accordance with paragraph 42.l. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports that the landlord had not made reasonable adjustments is outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman.
  4. In accordance with paragraph 42.a. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord’s response to the resident’s reports that a member of staff had made inappropriate comments is outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman.
  5. In accordance with paragraph 42.l. of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, the landlord’s response to the resident’s concerns about contact restrictions is outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman.

Orders

  1. The landlord is ordered within 4 weeks of this report to provide evidence that it has:
    1. Written to the resident to apologise for the failings identified in this report.
    2. Paid the resident £50 compensation for not fully responding to the resident’s complaint about his front door (the landlord should speak to the resident to confirm the arrangements for paying this sum prior to making the payment).
    3. Spoken to and written to the resident setting out its plans, including timescales for replacing the front door. The landlord should include whether there is any choice in terms of the colour of the door.